Seeing how I missed my friend before the start, I went to the back of his coral to see if I could find him. No luck finding him before the start. When we finally were off, I stayed at the very back of the coral and decided I would weave my way up in an effort to find him. My plan was to look for him until mile 2. At that point if I didn't find him I was on my own. I also came to the conclusion that if I was going to run on my own that I needed to make up some time to run at least a sub 1:45. I didn't think a PR was in order as I lost so much time at the beginning and my mental preparation for the race was on training, not PR. After mile 1 (8:30ish), I was beginning to worry that I wouldn't find him and I was going to have to start pushing the pace. I decided that mile 2 would be at ideal race pace (7:45ish) to see what I had. I felt bad weaving around so many people who probably thought I had no idea what pacing was. My legs were cranky and I was very much looking forward to hopefully finding my friend as I just didn't know what would happen otherwise. FINALLY, the seas parted a little before mile 2 and I found him! It turns out I missed his coral by 1.

Ok - back to the original plan. I would run with him at his pace until mile 12. At that point, he was mine! We kept a nice and easy 9 flat pace until about mile 8 where he started to slow. As we arrived into town I warned him not to pay attention to the street numbers as we made our way up Atlantic. I know from experience this can be frustrating (he told me after the race that we was counting the street numbers and it was a bad idea). Somewhere between mile 9 and 10, the hasher oasis (beer stop) appeared. That was the best tasting 'water' stop I have ever had - thank you hashers! Anyway, miles 10 - 12 were a combination of walking and running. My friend was feeling it. At the water stop before mile 12, I encouraged my friend to gather all his energy as we were going to run the final mile. He did great - no walking the last mile and he even sprinted for the last .1! Mission accomplished - he is a half marathoner. :)

I love this race - lot's of fun! I particularly enjoyed pacing somebody as I was much more able to take it all in. :)

Great weekend all the way around, including the BT swim and dinner on Saturday.

Find my friend a head of time.

Met a couple of different groups of friends after the race, including the cool BTers. :)


As always a fun race.

However, I was disappointed to see that they were not offering GU's at mile 10 like in year's past. If I had planned on that as part of my nutrition plan, I would have been upset!